The Greening of IT

Environmental issues have been a trendy concern for a long time, at least as far back as I can remember. But last year, buzz around the issue seemed to reach a fever pitch. Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Academy Award, and in May, Vanity Fair published its “Green Issue,” with Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover standing in spiked boots beside a polar bear in an icy landscape. Other magazines and media outlets soon turned out similar programs on the environment.

Right around that time, we ran an item on Thomson Prometric unveiling an eco-friendly “test center of the future.” I wrote the article and have to confess that initially I didn’t think the issue of the environment as it relates to IT had legs to it, beyond it making basic sense to have certificants take tests in a room with less energy requirements and furniture that was easier to rearrange.

But in the months that followed, Steve Jobs declared “a greener Apple” program, and Intel, Google, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft partnered with the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the World Wildlife Fund, among others, to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI). IT and environmental concerns were converging rapidly, and the issue was no longer one we could afford to ignore.

And so we present “Certification Goes Green” in our April issue, just in time for Earth Day. Our cover feature sees our associate editor, Agatha Gilmore, revisiting Thomson Prometric’s green test center program, finding it successful and growing. From there, Gilmore moves on to investigating ways tech companies are challenged in terms of managing their resources. This is of foremost concern when it comes to power usage — we found a staggering amount of power being wasted in data centers and other IT facilities. Hopefully, as the IT industry becomes more aware of this problem, it will take steps to address it.

It’s likely the first step in the greening of IT, a process industries across the board are grappling with.